My Story:
Here's the deal my name is ELgin Bokari T. Smith, and I'm going to spend the whole summer in Korea travling around everywhere. This will be my first time I've been out of the country. Im pretty much going because it would be fun and I really like Korean culture. Im also doing a side project talking about all the things I experence while over seas.

Monday, June 9, 2008

RED LIGHT

So this has been an interesting few days. On Thursday Christine told me about this MTV sponsored party at this club called The Circle so Jaewon and I decided to go. The club was really nice, and had light beams and a smoke machine, like in music videos. The only bad part about the club was the drinks and music. Every drink was at least 10 bucks and these weren’t big cubs I'm talking sippy cups with a lot of ice. Jaewon got a beer and that was ten bucks as well. Some dirty-south rapper performed whose name I cant remember, his style was very "TODAY" I don’t think I'll hear from him in 2 years. O and the music was not very good. It was a mix of old school and new school "POPular" rap. For example I never want to hear the song, everybody dance now again. But I did meet a nice girl and Jaewon got a phone number so the night wasn’t a total waist.

On Friday I needed to rest from my Thursday night, but my sister gave me a quick tour of E-mart. E-Mart is like Best Buy times a billion. Instead of having a section for games and cameras, it’s an entire floor, crazy right. While there I decided to pick up some a few bootleg movies (Forbidden Kingdom, Machine Girl, Korean movie called Kidnap, and some Thai movie).

Saturday I was really bored so I took a bike ride around E-mart so I could really check out the area. I didn’t see anything I wanted to buy so I kept riding. While riding around I turned on this strange street with a lot of glass windows. At first I thought it was a beauty supply area because the walls inside the windows were pink and had a girl sitting in a white chair. After seeming the same store down the block (and besides the fact that all the ladies were all signaling for me to come over) I figured it must be a red light district. A red light district is a block were you can pay a prostitute for sex (instead of them being on a street corner you go to there window). I admittedly high tailed my butt out of there but then realized I've never seen anything like this before, and thought this would something cool to draw. So I called Jae to ask how to say, can I draw you, just in case I got stopped. After learning the phrase I found a good corner and got started. The prostitute across from me noticed that I was drawing and signaled for me to stop. So I went over to the prostitute and asked if I could draw her and flashed 20 bucks. I then showed her some drawings in my sketchbook to show that I was an actually artist so she said it was ok. I went back to my corner and begun drawing my picture. In the mean time she went back to her job trying to get dudes to come over to her window. After realizing no one really wants sex at 4 in the after noon she decided to come see my drawing. I had only been drawing for like 3 mins so I only had the pose down and didn’t want to show the drawing to her until I was close to being done. So when she came over I tried not to show her. This upset her and so she grabs my drawing and took it out of my sketchbook, and start showing it to her friends. I didn’t know what to do so I called Jae and had him talk to her. By the time I gave her the phone she already ripped up my picture. After talking to her Jae told me that she that she only wanted me to draw her face and was mad because I was drawing her full body. Me not speaking full Korean didn’t understand this when asking her in the beginning. Well I felt really bad because it was just a mistake in commutation so I told her that I would draw her face but by that time she didn’t want to do it. So I just left it alone, and plus I had been there for long enough to draw a picture later. Still I felt bad for taking up her time so I gave her a few bucks and told her I was sorry.

That night I met up with Jaewon and Bling at the hookah bar. There was a singer at the Hookah bar but I believe she was high while singing. After the Hookah bar we went to this spot called two two chicken, which is pretty funny because in Hangeul it sounds like your saying dodo chicken. The chicken was really good and reminded me of this chicken spot in Chicago called Harold’s. We then went to play Korean style pool and ended the night at an Internet cafe.

Sunday my sister and I were suppose to meet up with Dylan but she never called back. So we watch movies and I finished the Red light district picture.

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DA kid

is a visual arts teacher and youth development worker. Growing up in St. Louis Missouri, Elgin discovered a passion for art in elementary school while drawing his favorite cartoon characters on his homework. With encouragement from his 6th grade teacher, Elgin moved on to comic books and public murals. He then attended Central Visual and Performing Arts High School where he studied visual arts, ceramics, and piano. In 2009, Elgin received a BFA in Graphic Illustration and Sculpture.
Elgin began work as an artist assistant for Chicago ceramic artist and Whitney Bi-Annual artist-in-residence Theaster Gates. In addition to his work with Free Write, Elgin teaches visual arts teacher at the Gary Comer Youth Center.